The present invention relates generally to the field of utility and smart meter networks, and more particularly to adaptive sampling of smart meter data with consideration of balancing constraints.
A smart meter is typically an electronic device that records consumption of energy in intervals of an hour or less and communicates that information to a utility for monitoring and billing purposes. Deployments of smart meters are designed for utility billing and some basic analysis requirements. The use of Advanced Metering Infrastructures (AMIs) differs from traditional automatic meter reading in that it enables two-way communications with the smart meter. Deployment of AMIs offers a wide range of opportunities for utilities and network operators: a higher spatio-temporal resolution of loads in the network (e.g., both space (location) and time considerations of network loads), information to build more accurate forecasting models, and information to perform more efficient optimization of the network. Problems with the collection of data from AMIs are the potential impact on the privacy of consumer, and the costs for data storage and transmission. A common way to mitigate these issues is data aggregation, which reduces the amount of information that is transmitted and stored.